Syllabus Section: Science and Technology
WHY IN NEWS?
The soldier in Kerala is believed to have contracted Plasmodium ovale during his posting in Sudan, from where he returned nearly a year ago, and where Plasmodium ovale is endemic.
ABOUT
- P ovale rarely causes severe illness and there is no need for panic because of the case detected in Kerala
- P ovale is very similar to P vivax, which is not a killer form.
- Symptoms include fever for 48 hours , headache and nausea, and the treatment modality is the same as it is for a person infected with P vivax.
- It is termed ovale as about 20% of the parasitised cells are oval in shape.
- The Kerala case could be an isolated one and there are no recorded cases of local transmission so far.
- Malaria is caused by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito, if the mosquito itself is infected with a malarial parasite
- There are five kinds of malarial parasites — Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax (the commonest ones), Plasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium knowlesi.
- Therefore, to say that someone has contracted the Plasmodium ovale type of malaria means that the person has been infected by that particular parasite.
- In India, out of 1.57 lakh malaria cases in the high-burden states of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Meghalaya and Madhya Pradesh in 2019, 1.1 lakh cases (70%) were cases of falciparum malaria, according to a statement by the Health Ministry
Source: Indian Express